Lindsey Kleber says justice system failed

Oct. 17, 2013

Lindsey Kleber She has said she shot Steven Kleber because she worried about their children's safety with him.

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Convinced her ex-husband injured their daughter — and was going to get away with it — she kidnapped him and shot him in the back.

Three years later, Lindsey Kleber watched from a jail cell as her ex, Steven Kleber, was put on trial for child abuse.

Ultimately, he was acquitted.

In a 7-page letter from prison, Lindsey Kleber described her reaction to the jury’s verdict.

“I was hoping and praying my daughter got her justice but it failed her,” she wrote.

“Steven was found not guilty but he will always be guilty to me!”

The letter described Lindsey Kleber’s disappointment in jury members. She decried Steven Kleber’s testimony as coached, well-polished and convincing.

At times, she lambasted the entire legal system.

“People who are guilty get off and some innocent people do wind up in prison! That’s how our justice system works,” she wrote.

On Oct. 7, 2010, Lindsey Kleber forced Stephen Kleber to leave the Baptist Bible College campus at gunpoint. Lindsey Kleber had met with Greene County prosecutors earlier that day, records say, and was afraid Steven Kleber might get probation for the alleged abuse of their daughter Mya.

In January 2012, Lindsey Kleber pleaded guilty to assault and other charges in Greene County court, acknowledging that she had abducted Steven Kleber and later shot him as he fled from her car.

She was sentenced to three years in prison.

In September, Lindsey Kleber was first to take the stand against the father of her children.

Wearing the striped gray uniform of the Chillicothe Correctional Institution, she tried to convince the jury of what she believed — that Steven Kleber, frustrated the 7-week-old girl would not stop crying one night, shook her and permanently damaged the baby’s brain.

But the jury was more convinced by Steven Kleber’s account. He said he tripped on a cord connected to a TV while holding Mya.

In the letter, Lindsey Kleber said strict rules governing trial proceedings prevented her from describing her ex-husband’s character or the events immediately after Mya’s injury.

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“I was very limited on what to say and could only answer the questions that was asked. You don’t have the opportunity to talk freely,” she wrote.

That’s one difference between criminal court and family court, where Lindsey Kleber will soon be fighting her ex for custody of Mya, now 3, and the couple’s other daughter, age 5.

Steven Kleber, 28, now of Tampa, Fla., told the News-Leader after his acquittal that he had only seen his two daughters through photographs during the past three years, but the thought of them is what kept him motivated.

A message for Steven Kleber through his attorney was not returned for this report.

“At this point, I don’t care if people ever believe me,” Kleber said at the courthouse.

“I just want those two little girls to know they can have a normal life as much as possible.”

He said he looked forward to reconnecting with his daughters.

Lindsey Kleber said the girls are better left in the custody of her parents.